The Vervocity team has a wealth of knowledge. After all, we’re online and building websites all day! We collected a list of websites that will help you improve productivity, stay informed, and have fun in the new year. We’d love to learn from you, too, so if you have a website to share, post it in the comments section below!
1. Not sure how something will look on your website if you edit a piece of code?
Use this Try It tool for quick tests – http://www.w3schools.com/tags/tryit.asp?filename=tryhtml_image_diffloc. Put your code in on the left and hit the “See Result” button. You’ll see what it’ll look like on the right. W3Schools is a great resource for web developers looking for help with HTML, CSS, Bootstrap, and more.
2. Is it mobile friendly?
Paste any URL in the Responsinator tool at https://www.responsinator.com and see what the website looks like in a wide variety of mobile devices. You’ll see what the site looks like on an iPhone 5, an iPhone 6, an iPhone 6 Plus, a basic Android device, an Android Nexus 4, and on an iPad. This free tool is pretty fun to play with, so give it a whirl!
3. Find out what a website used to look like!
The Wayback Machine – http://archive.org/web/ – is a free Internet archive. The project was founded in 1996 and now includes texts, audio, moving images, software, and archived web pages. According to the 501(c)(3) non-profit, the libraries are there “to preserve society’s cultural artifacts and to provide access to them”. Use this tool for research and to satisfy your curiosity, but be careful. The Wayback Machine can suck you down the rabbit hole and before you know it hours have passed!
4. Create unique graphics to share on social media
Do you want words on your photo? Are you looking for holiday clip art? Do you want to put a photo inside a circle? Canva.com is great for that! Canva will start you out with a graphic that is the right size for social media, a presentation, a poster, a Facebook cover image, a blog graphic, and more. Pick your size, upload your own images, find clip art, customize text, play with backgrounds and more. Then download the single image or multi-page project as a JPG, a PNG, or a PDF. It’s as easy as that! While you can use most of the features for free, you can purchase bits and pieces to complete your project if necessary. Think of Canva as Photoshop for the Photoshop impaired … and have fun with it!
5. Want to ditch paper note-taking?
If you take notes at work, like to make lists, or want to sync everything with your phone or computer, Evernote is for you. Access this free tool from your computer or your smartphone and every time you write a note, you can access it from everywhere at once! Create and customize your notes almost like you are in a Microsoft Word document. You can also stay organized with separate notebooks, tags, and search abilities. That’s not all! You can also send notes to others, share them on social media, email them to yourself and others, and create a URL to share! Believe it or not, there are ways to upgrade for a fee, so explore what works for you, your business, and your colleagues today.
6. Do you follow technology news?
We like to follow TechCrunch for tech news. While it began as a blog, it’s now one of the many technology news sites out there. We follow the site for developer news, startups, social media topics, breaking news, tech reviews, interviews, and more!
7. Pick a color, any color
0to255 is a free tool that helps web designers (and other regular folks) find lighter and darker variations of colors. This comes in handy when you’re trying to pick themed colors, when you’re looking for color inspiration, or you’re just plain stuck! The tool allows you to pick a color and see tints (lighter versions) and shades (darker versions) of that color. Better yet, hit the “random color” button and let the website pick one for you!
8. Grammar-schmammer
If you struggle with grammar in your Facebook posts, blog entries, on your website, or elsewhere, we suggest you use the free Hemmingway App. While it is not infallible, it will get you through hard to read sentences, adverbs, text written in a passive voice, and more. Paste your text in the field and the tool begins marking it for review. Hover your mouse over highlighted text for help editing hard to read passages. The Hemmingway App will give you a readability score, and for web developers, it will help you edit your heading elements.
9. Advanced grammar-schmammer
For advanced writers looking for help with grammar, we recommend Grammarly. With an online text editor and browser extensions for Chrome and Safari you can’t go wrong for free! The tool helps you correct grammar and spelling errors as you work. For a paid upgrade, you’ll enjoy the plagiarism detector and Grammarly for Microsoft Office.
10. The best answer to any question
Use Quora.com when you need a little help answering a question. Our designers and developers like to ask and answer questions here because they reach people with a broad range of experience. Beyond just asking your questions, Quora is a great place for an interesting read.
11. Bonus!
If you haven’t already checked out Vervocity.io, you should! Our website features a great blog about websites, e-marketing, do-it-yourself tech tips, and other fun stuff. While you’re there, check out our portfolio, meet the VI team, and see what makes us tick. You can even partner with us and make money! Here’s that link again — Vervocity.io — and have fun checking out all these website designs!
